29 February 2020

Arwa Chawal and Usna Chawal





I am proud Bengali when it comes about food. We Bengalis are known for our authentic love for rice, fish curry and potato made with poppy seed (vaat, macher jhol and alu posto). You can find this dish in almost every household of West Bengal. I am accepting the fact that, we do fight over Hilsa and Prawn but we never thought about dividing rice in the categories called "arwa" and "usna". We never dared to do this with our "vaat". We have our 'Swarna', 'Rotna', 'IR8' etc but they are types of paddy not rice.When I came out of West Bengal to stay in a different state of India for my job, I was introduced with these concepts called "arwa chawal and usna chawal" for the first time in my life. Like all other Bengalis I was bit confused to differentiate between these two. I google it but unable to understand the basic difference. So, I tried to cook both the rice on different times. Recently both of them came to my dream and they introduced themselves to me. Our conversation was something like-
"Hi there! I am arwa chawal and I am a great believer of having boiled food, so I am refined and takes less time in getting ready".
"Usna chawal said Hello Ji, Namaste. I believe in the concept of 'khate pite gharka' and you can't call me 'mota' and blame me for taking time in getting ready, this is the way I am"

That very moment my alarm start singing "sooraj ki baahon mein, ab hai yeh zindagi" and my dream remain incomplete but I came to understand the basic difference between "arwa chawal and usna chawal" and feel like sharing it with confused people like me and as I am not much conscious about nutritious value of them I love them equally.

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